Pragmatic University Aids Colombia

CALI, Colombia, Feb. 16—An innovating, fast‐growing university here has upset Co­lombian educational traditions, become a center of regional de­velopment and attracted a great deal of international support.

The University of Valle is run by a group of energetic young men, who live on many small cups of coffee and keep drop­ping in on one another in their shirtsleeves.

They have created something quite unusual in Latin America, a public university where the deans associate with each other, the professors associate with the deans, the students associ­ate with the professors, and the whole establishment is closely associated with the community.

The Cauca Valley is a rich, but still largely underdeveloped area. The university is trying to equip itself to provide brains and skills to carry out its de­velopment. In operation a dozen years, it is already providing a number of important, and in the national context, unusual serv­ices.

The Engineering School is studying pollution in the Cauca River. The Economics School is setting up a training program for executives and is making a study of Cali's finances.

Teacher Training Stressed

The School of Education has given professional training to 200 local secondary school teachers. It is now starting an ambitious program to prepare and provide low‐cost books and laboratory equipment for the valley's schools.

“The traditonal concept of our universities was that of a sedentary place, a retreat,” said

Dr. Carvajal has entrusted much of the running of the university to a group of younger deans and administrators, the two most prominent of whom are Alfonso Ocampo, dean of studies, and Gabriel Velasquez, dean of the medical school.

The Rockefeller Foundation has given more than $3 million to the university, mainly to its medical school, and keeps a small technical staff there. Last week the Ford Foundation, which has been helping develop the general studies program, gave $600,000 to the engineer­ing and education schools.

Several United States univer‐ sities including Tulane, Harvard and Cornell have supplied per‐ sonnel to different programs here

One Ford Foundation official commented that the University of Valle, in its direct involve‐

Despite—perhaps because of —this involvement, in which many of the students have an opportunity to participate di­rectly, these students in gener­al have shown themselves re­luctant to get into politics. This is most unusual in a public La­tin‐American university.

What is apparent, both in students and professors, is a high level of activity, and con­siderable pride in the university. Grading standards are among the stiffest in Colombia, but despite this, the dropout rate has fallen from 60 per cent to 35 per cent.

In part this is attributed to the general studies program started last year. All students, whether they are taking medi­cine, engineering or liberal arts, study a common program for the first two years.